The spire of the Empire State Building. The peaked arches of the Brooklyn Bridge. The rooftop water tower. For New Yorkers, all three are synonymous with the city’s skyline. But the water tower, that humble relic from a bygone era when any building over six stories was required to have one, just received a redesign. Atop 20 Jay Street, just south of the Manhattan Bridge in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Dumbo, sits a water tower reinvented as a Technicolor sculpture courtesy of artist Tom Fruin. Made of roughly one thousand individual pieces of salvaged Plexiglas and some steel bands, Fruin’s Watertower resembles a modern stained-glass window in the round. During the day the sun illuminates the kaleidoscopic work, and at night it’s lit from within by a custom-designed light sequence by conceptual artist Ryan Holsopple. Even during the day, it’s visible from the Manhattan Bridge, Brooklyn Bridge Park, and various points in lower Manhattan. Next spring many more of the urban icons will receive makeovers as part of the Water Tank Project, a public initiative that has enlisted artists ranging from Ed Ruscha to Jay-Z to Andy Goldsworthy.

Tom Fruin’s Watertower, through June 2013; 20 Jay St., Brooklyn, New York